Skills
Physical Skills Your physical skills represent skills that require coordination, muscle memory, strength, and precision. Weapon Your Weapon skill represents your training in combat and weapon use. Untrained Weapon users can still throw a punch and figure out how to swing a sword, but only in an unfocused, primitive capacity. Novices often fight passably with most weapons, albeit with stance and form problems. Trained Weapon users have passing familiarity with most weapons, and can keep on point and composed in a fight. Experts are adept with most weapons their wield, often especially skilled with a few favourites. Brawn Your Brawn skill represents your strength and leverage. Untrained Brawn users can lift reasonable weight. Novice Brawn users have a decent core and know how to use angles and form to help lift and move more weight. Those Trained in Brawn are sturdy and bulky, able to lift heavy objects with ease and move them where they please. Experts have reached the pinnacle of skill and fitness, able to lift and move extreme weights. Delicate Your Delicate skill represents your precision and steady hands. Untrained Delicate users are a bit fumbly and shaky. Novices are more composed, often only able to hold surgical focus for a short time. Trained Delicate users are tough to startle and smooth in their work. Experts are adept and skilled with their hands, able to switch from iron grip to feather-light touch with ease. Grace Your Grace skill represents your speed and motor skills. Untrained Grace users are lumbering and inexact. Novices are good throwers and dodgers, and a bit quicker than most. Those trained in Grace are quick, jump long and high, and can perform some low-level acrobatics. Experts are swift and slick, twisting and leaping with solid footing and control. Craft Your Craft skill represents a specific craft – you may choose multiple (this example uses Carpentry). An Untrained carpenter can hammer nails into a board, but their work is rough and wobbly. A Novice carpenter can make solid benches, stools, and shelves, but might not have good handiwork with cabinetry and carvings. A Trained carpenter is skilled with woodwork, from carved relief to resilient buildings and reliable wagons. An Expert carpenter is a rare breed, bending and working wood to a degree difficult to replicate. Mental Skills Your mental skills represent skills that require memory, knowledge, critical thinking, and experience with observation and interpretation. Arcana Your Arcana skill represents knowledge of magical theory and function. Those Untrained in arcana are familiar with the basics of the elements, cosmology, and practice, but often have little other knowledge. Novices are rote with fundamental knowledge, but shaky with more precise detail about the planes and ritual theory. Those Trained in Arcana know their way around magic, from alchemical residuum to elemental classification. Experts are often good friends to mages and academics, knowledgeable about many aspects of magical phenomena. Science Your Science skill represents knowledge of naturalism and physical laws. Those Untrained in Science might struggle with taxonomy and detail, but understand basics – how rivers work, what clouds are, how light works. Novices often have one or two pet topics they grasp well, but lack in other areas. Those Trained in Science not only have several specialities, but also have a firm grasp of the basics of a wide range of topics, to better understand the interrelation of the sciences. Experts often have a singular great work or extensive area of expertise, in addition to comprehensive knowledge of many diverse topics of study. Politics Your Politics skill represents knowledge of government, history, geography, and regional political strife. Those Untrained in Politics might be screwed together fine, but with some poorly-formed ideas or misconceptions about historical events or political theories. Novices often know a decent bit about their local area or a favourite place, but might be lacking in more distant and exotic places. Trained Politics users have a decent interrelational grasp of the topics – how geography influences history, how history influences politics, how politics influence government, and how all feed back into each other. Experts often have deep knowledge in a specialization or two. Doctor Your Doctor skill represents practical medical knowledge. Untrained Doctors can clean a wound and patch small cuts, as well as manage symptoms from common ails. Novice Doctors often immediately work to gain practical and effective first aid skill, neglecting common practice. Trained Doctors fill out their knowledge in disease and illness, useful both after injury and when laid low by sickness. Expert Doctors are fast and communicative workers, able to delegate and direct fellows to work as an effective whole – coloured with a speciality or two. Specialist Your Specialist skill represents a specific specilization – you may choose multiple (this example uses Monstrology). Untrained Monstrologists know when something is hostile, but may not know how to handle and identify a monster. Novice Monstrologists understand elementary classifications, monster genesis, and threat assessment – they can often quell and work with more passive monsters that might attack others. Trained Monstrologists are functional workers – identify, control, assess, process; they can often find safe and effective methods to keep villages safe from nearby threats. Expert Monstrologists often work to train, tame, and control rarer and more powerful creatures, where others might balk or need greater numbers. Social Skills Your social skills represent skills that rely on interpersonal communication, reading and translating body language and nuance, and identifying the way others think. Understand Your Understand skill represents your ability to read into the motive and thoughts of others. Untrained Understand users might be occasionally awkward, fumbling, or misspeak – as often as anyone else. Novices are empathetic and decent in their assesments of others, but might be gauche or pushy, if not vague or imprecise. Trained Understand users can identify the thoughts and behaviours of others from verbal cues, body language, or context clues with relative ease. Experts can be spooky, frequently helping others finish sentences, and nigh impossible to fool. Conceal Your Conceal skill represents your control over your own tells and body language. Untrained Concealers can get away with white lies and hold their own under some pressure, but fold easily enough. Novices are often decent liars, but can’t last too long under intense scrutiny. Trained Concealers are slick and difficult to crack. Experts are unflappable, and can get away with saying almost anything if their listener isn’t paying close attention. Convince Your Convince skill represents your ability to influence others. While Conceal is about hiding your intent and truth, Convince represents communicating and establishing intent and truth. Untrained Convincers can often enforce their will over small things, but can be easily shrugged off as bullies or wet blankets over anything major. Novices can make a solid, reasoned case for some things, but often need to pause if they’re stumped. Trained Convincers can roll with the punches, hesitating minimally when taking in new information and adapting their appeals. Experts are rigorous debaters and effective diplomats, succinctly explaining information and clearly communicating urgency, importance, and implications. Barter Your Barter skill represents your ability to haggle and negotiate. Concealing can fool someone and Convincing can win them over, but Barter is about numbers and resources. Untrained Barterers can be duped by pushy sellers and take the short end of contract negotiations. Novices know how to hold their ground and give it up – even if their gains are small, they know how to keep someone at the table. Trained Barterers have a solid grasp of value and exchange, able to work out equitable deals and fair pay with ease. Experts are often amiable and considerate, able to eke out strong and solid ties with understanding of how to keep a customer and convince a buyer – not just once, but long-term, and to solid benefit. Perform Your Perform skill represents how well you can establish and maintain an audience. Untrained Performers can lose a story thread or amble, keeping friends engaged but audiences less so. Novice Performers can stand on a stage and keep up, but aren’t the centre of a show or the anchor for a performance. Trained Performers know how to whip up a crowd with a few words and milk them for a while. Experts pull their audiences on strings like fish on a reel; pulling and releasing to keep them on the edge of their seats. Magical Skills Your Magical skills represent skills requiring influence, focus, and connection to magic. Elemental Your Elemental skill represents how well you can evoke and channel the elements. Untrained Elementalists have basic common magic – they can snap a spark, whip up a gust, fill a waterskin and make balls of mud, but that’s about it. Novices can solidly and effectively channel the primary elements (fire, water, earth, air) in combat (earth, air, and water deal physical damage, like weapons), while struggling with the secondary elements (ice, lightning, acid, poison, pain, force). Trained Elementalists are emotionally sturdy, and can effortlessly bend and manipulate the elements. Experts understand the flux and flow of an element, and their interrelation; more than skill, these Elementalists are often sage and wise from their teachings. Opposing elements annihilate each other in a flash of light - fire annihilates with water, earth annihilates with air. Secondary elements are cast by channeling two component elements. Fire and Water make Acid. Air and Earth make Force. Fire and Earth make Pain. Water and Air make Cold. Water and Earth make Poison. Fire and Air make Lightning. Secondary elements annihilate with the secondary element of opposite composition (so Acid and Force annihilate because one is water and fire, the other is earth and air; and so on). Alchemy Your Alchemy skill represents how well you can work with the magical properties of various materials. Untrained Alchemists know how to cook with reagents and spark them for household tasks; from fire reagents bringing a pot swiftly to boil, or a jolt of alchemical lightning keeping laundry lint-free; potions are a whole other matter. Novices are capable, but often fully occupied with simple potions. Trained Alchemists are good at identifying and working materials, as well as making stable and effective potions repeatably. Expert Alchemists are so adept with potions as to consider them petty work, with side projects and advanced recipes taking the fore. Ritual Your Ritual skill represents your ability to influence fate, luck, and reason; and use tools and components to create complicated magical effects. Untrained Ritualists know their invocations and banishments in case of emergencies, but can remember very little (much less weave a ritual single-handedly). Novices might have a few staples – seers, wards, or luck-benders. Trained Ritualists have a solid grasp of most common rituals and know a few exotic and complex specialties, able to recreate other spells and pull off complex rites with some difficulty. Experts are frequently singular in focus, having a sphere or area of study where they devote their efforts. Mortal Your Mortal skill represents your ability to utilize the magic innate to mortal creatures and the mortal plane. Those Untrained in mortal magic might have some small tricks – like making plants grow, or whispering to birds, or magically screwing up their faces, but that’s about it. The Mortal skill requires you to pick a single School. You may learn other Mortal schools as separate skills (similar to Craft or Specialist). Planar Your Planar skill represents your ability to utilize the magic innate to the planes – Celestial, Dark, and Demonic. Specifically being untrained grants nothing; a pact is required with a Dark, Demonic, or Celestial creature. This creature’s pact restricts your magic, disallowing usage of the two other Schools.